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Perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin.

Salman Rushdie

People can do bad things with free speech as well as good. You have to defend the Ku Klux Klan as well as Martin Luther King. It’s like that. If you’re going to defend the principle, then you have to defend people who use the principle badly.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Bad Defense Freedom People Principle Yourself
If you actually want to change your world, there is a better way of doing it than blowing yourself up.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Better Change Way World Yourself
But there’s one thing we must all be clear about: terrorism is not the pursuit of legitimate goals by some sort of illegitimate means. Whatever the murderers may be trying to achieve, creating a better world certainly isn’t one of their goals. Instead they are out to murder innocent people.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Achievement Creation Goal Innocence Legal Murder People Pursuit Terrorism
It matters, it always matters, to name rubbish as rubbish; that to do otherwise is to legitimize it.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Legal Name
I think if we wish to live in any kind of a moral universe, we must hold the perpetrators of violence responsible for the violence they perpetrate. It’s very simple. The criminal is responsible for the crime.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Crime Kind Moral Responsible Simplicity Thinking Universe Violence
Religion, a mediaeval form of unreason, when combined with modern weaponry becomes a real threat to our freedoms. This religious totalitarianism has caused a deadly mutation in the heart of Islam and we see the tragic consequences in Paris today.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Combination Freedom Heart Reason Religion Threat Tragedy
How do you defeat terrorism? Don’t be terrorized.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Deep Defeat Fear Terrorism Yourself
One of the strange things about violent and authoritarian regimes is they don’t like the glare of negative publicity.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Negative Public Strange Violence
Stories in families are colossally important. Every family has stories: some funny, some proud, some embarrassing, some shameful. Knowing them is proof of belonging to the family.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Evidence Family Funny Important Shame Story
The world, somebody wrote, is the place we prove real by dying in it.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Death Place Reality World
I have always thought that these two ways of talking, one is the fantastic, the fable, the fairy tale, and the other being history, the scholarly study of what happened, I think they’re both amazing ways to understand human nature.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Fairy Tale Fantasy Human Myself Talk Thinking Understand Way
If you take a look at history, you will find that the understanding of what is good and evil has always existed before the individual religions. The religions were only invented by people afterwards, in order to express this idea.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Evil Existence Expression Goodness History Ideas People Understand
Self-censorship is a lie to yourself; if you are going to be trying to seriously create art, to create literary art, and you decide to hold back, to censor yourself, then you are a fool to yourself and it would be better that you kept your mouth shut and did not speak.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Decision Lying Serious Talk Try
I didn’t become a writer to write about me.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Myself Writing
Liberate yourself, because no one else is going to liberate you.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Freedom Liberty Yourself
If you’re offended, it’s your problem.
SALMAN RUSHDIE

Offense Problem Yourself

Perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin.

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Perhaps the story you finish is never the one you begin.

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